After Chanyeol manages to untangle himself from the mud pile without getting punched by Kai or Chen (Kyungsoo’s too soft to do anything violent), he immediately goes over to where he had planted himself before, beside Baekhyun.

There’s even a large divot there in the mud, to show how long he’s stayed there. Actually most of it was made because Chanyeol’s taken an interest to scooping out chunks of the ground and lobbing it at anyone or anything that comes into range. So far, his victims are a poor crab, the ground itself, and Kris. He missed the tall man, but the mud ball grazed his elbow, so it still counted.

He had a larger mud ball thrown at him for that. Bigger Kris hands meant bigger mud ball.

Chanyeol hadn’t actually thought about that. But then again, he doesn’t mind being covered in mud anyway. It feels refreshing, almost cooling, even.

Then, he has a light bulb moment.

“Mud facial!” He shrieks and dives head-first into the grey slush, sufficiently covering whatever bare pink part of his face which isn’t touched by the mud.

He closes his eyes and mouth, of course. He may love the mud, but he doesn’t want to eat it as of yet.

He emerges completely grey and tugs on the exited Baekhyun’s arm.

“Come on, Baek!”

Baekhyun doesn’t need much encouragement before he joins Chanyeol in the dirt (he’s a little simple-minded like that).

At the side, Suho wails internally and seriously contemplates exchanging them for Lay or Sehun or even Minseok.

He can vaguely hear Chanyeol suggesting they do mud angels face down to leave an impression in the ground and actually stumbles forward to stop them at that point.

“Baekhyun, no!” He grabs both the five year olds by their arms and pulls them up from their half-lying down position. “Guys, how about we go over to the rock pool?” He smiles over at the safe, relatively dry pile of rounded grey rocks where Luhan, Tao, and Lay are playing.

Chanyeol wrinkles his nose at the friendly suggestion and pulls on Baekhyun’s soggy sleeve.

“Eh. That’s no fun. Come on, Baekie, let’s go, uh, to the other side of there.”

His chubby arm slides out of Suho’s rather slack grasp and, arms linked with Baekhyun, they both walk to another exact same part of the mud plain.

Suho gives up and decides that he can throw away their clothes after the day, anyway.

So, he walks away.

After maybe five seconds, Chanyeol sneaks a peek behind at Suho and, to his delight, the man has his back turned to them, which means he’s unsuspecting, which means that he’s vulnerable, which means that he makes a great person to pull pranks on. Pranks of the best kind, specifically mud pranks.

“Psst, hey.” Chanyeol nudges Baekhyun in the side and bends down to pick something up from the ground.

“Hmm?” Baekhyun turns his gaze from an interestingly coloured rock to look at Chanyeol.

Looking around for any adults or anyone who’ll spoil their fun, Chanyeol plops a slowly dissolving ball of mud into Baekhyun's hand and creepily nods toward an unsuspecting Suho.

*****

A minute later, they’re sneaking up on Suho, balls of sculpted mud in hand. Chanyeol can’t keep a twitchy smile from his face, and neither can Baekhyun.

It’s either Suho’s deaf, or he’s just really unobservant. The two kids were making so many squishy mud sounds that they had attracted the attention of a nearby Chen and a squished Kai. Kai takes one look at them and Suho, rolls his eyes, and goes back to clinging onto Kyungsoo’s cuddly body.

Chen, on the other hand, abandons the half-assed mud pile he was originally a part of and digs a ball of dirt out of the ground too.

Chanyeol grins at him, because he has another recruit.

Chen grins evilly back, because he loves doing anything remotely related to bullying the adults.

It’s amazing how their legs don’t stick in the mud, and they get close to Suho in the end. Chanyeol winks at Baekhyun and signals one, two, three, with his fingers.

At one go, Chanyeol and Baekhyun shove their mud-filled hands inside of Suho’s clean pockets and run for it. Chen throws it at Suho’s shoulder, but it’s ok, Chanyeol never told him their plan in the first place.

Suho’s too deep in thought to realise what's happened until he feels water running down his legs.

When he does, though, he screams like a girl and immediately runs towards Chanyeol with the full intent of tickling the hell out of his kid.

And then Chanyeol flings a mud ball right bang smack into his face as he approaches.

Suho tackles all three of the kids into the ground and tickles the out of them.

Then they make mud angels together, because Suho’s clothes are ruined anyway and why not have fun with the kids, while he can?

************

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Preview:

"He sniffles. And his sniffles turn to silent sobs. And then his silent sobs turn into full out bawling."